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Examples of coy in a Sentence

It is distinctly odd to read a whole page dedicated to Hitler's life and character without a reference to his anti-Semitism. To say that Swiss banks contained gold coming from the bank accounts, the jewelry boxes, and the teeth of “concentration camp victims” is a little coy. —Ian Buruma, New Republic, 31 Jan. 2000

Rival camps are terrified that Bush will reject federal matching funds and the campaign-spending limits they impose, and Bush's aides are coy on the subject. —John F. Dickerson, Time, 8 Mar. 1999

While continuing to remain coy on financial aspects of the ACC Network, league commissioner John Swofford continued to be overly optimistic about the network’s prospects at the start of the league’s media day Thursday.

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'coy.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Near Antonyms

Synonym Discussion of coy

shy, bashful, diffident, modest, coy mean not inclined to be forward. shy implies a timid reserve and a shrinking from familiarity or contact with others. shy with strangersbashful implies a frightened or hesitant shyness characteristic of childhood and adolescence. a bashful boy out on his first datediffident stresses a distrust of one's own ability or opinion that causes hesitation in acting or speaking. felt diffident about raising an objectionmodest suggests absence of undue confidence or conceit. modest about her successcoy implies a pretended shyness. put off by her coy manner

Recent Examples of coy from the Web

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'coy.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

COY Defined for Kids

coy

Definition of coy for Students

: falsely shy or modest

History for coy

Coy now usually means “pretending to be shy,” but earlier in the history of English it meant just “shy” as well as “quiet.” English borrowed the word from medieval French. In French, it comes, by regular changes in sound, from Latin quietus, which—borrowed directly from Latin into English—gives us the word quiet.